BioShock: Infinite

Bioshock Infinite is Irrational Games’ latest entry in the Bioshock franchise. Though it’s based on Unreal Engine 3 – making it our obligatory UE3 game – Irrational had added a number of effects that make the game rather GPU-intensive on its highest settings. As an added bonus it includes a built-in benchmark composed of several scenes, a rarity for UE3 engine games, so we can easily get a good representation of what Bioshock’s performance is like.

Both the 650M and desktop GT 640 are able to outperform Iris Pro here. Compared to the 55W configuration, the 650M is 32% faster. There's not a huge difference in performance between the GT 640 and 650M, indicating that the performance advantage here isn't due to memory bandwidth but something fundamental to the GPU architecture.

In the grand scheme of things, Iris Pro does extremely well. There isn't an integrated GPU that can touch it. Only the 100W desktop Trinity approaches Iris Pro performance but at more than 2x the TDP.

The standings don't really change at the higher resolution/quality settings, but we do see some of the benefits of Crystalwell appear. A 9% advantage over the 100W desktop Trinity part grows to 18% as memory bandwidth demands increase. Compared to the desktop HD 4000 we're seeing more than 2x the performance, which means in mobile that number will likely grow even further. The mobile Trinity comparison is a shut out as well.

177 Comments

To be fair, there is only one data point (GFXBenchmark 2.7 T-Rex HD - 4X MSAA) where the 47W cTDP configuration is more than 40% slower than the tested GT 650M (rMBP15 90W).Actually we have the following [min, max, avg, median] for 47W (55W):games: 61%, 106%, 78%, 75% (62%, 112%, 82%, 76%)synth.: 55%, 122%, 95%, 94% (59%, 131%, 102%, 100%)compute: 85%, 514%, 205%, 153% (86%, 522%, 210%, 159%)overall: 55%, 514%, 101%, 85% (59%, 522%, 106%, 92%)So typically around 75% for games with a considerably lower TDP - not that bad.I do not know whether Intel claimed equal or better performance given a specific TDP or not. With the given 47W (55W) compared to a 650M it would indeed be a false claim.But my point is, that with at least ~60% performance and typically ~75% it is admittedly much closer than you stated.Reply

Correct. GT 650M by default is usually 835MHz + Boost, with 4GHz RAM. The GTX 660M is 875MHz + Boost with 4GHz RAM. So the rMBP15 is a best-case for GT 650M. However, it's not usually a ton faster than the regular GT 650M -- benchmarks for the UX51VZ are available here:http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/814Reply

worst mistake intel made was that demo with DIRT when it was side by side with a 650m laptop. That set people's expectations. and it falls short in the reviews and people are dogging it. If they would have just kept quite people would be praising them up and down right now.Reply